The official loop is cook, serve, build, farm, hire, and keep earning while you are away. A new restaurant still starts with you doing the work.
Opening loop
- Seat the customer and wait for the order.
- Cook the dish. Early orders are often a simple rice bowl.
- Deliver the plate and let the customer finish and pay.
- Wash the dishes. A first-session walkthrough timed a wash at about 20 seconds.
- Open Manage when you have enough cash to hire, and use the shopkeeper for basic wooden chairs and tables before you buy decor.
One opening walkthrough banked about $100 from a rice bowl and was holding about $140 before the next hire. Treat those figures as a first-session observation, not a permanent menu price. Later menu guides put an unstocked rice fallback near $10 once better dishes exist, so do not plan a whole restaurant around the opening bowl.
Who to hire first
Guides disagree because they are solving different bottlenecks.
- Hire a cook first when you are still cooking every plate. Cooking is the longest manual step, and a commonly cited first cook costs about $100.
- Hire a waiter first when customers are waiting to be seated or plates are sitting after they are cooked. A beginner walkthrough bought a waiter by mistake and immediately felt the missing cook.
- Add a cleaner when dirty dishes, not empty seats, are what stops the next customer.
- A compact three-person floor (one cook, one waiter, one cleaner) is a layout recommendation. It is not a staff cap. Extra wages before the floor is tight just pay people to walk.
Farming is a separate unlock, described around $350 in early progression notes and also as a quest objective. Do not buy it, or a pile of decor, until one full table cycle finishes without a line.
What done looks like
You can serve a full cycle, every worker you hired can reach their station in a step or two, and the next cash goes into another seat or the farm unlock rather than a theme. Continue with keeping rice from taking the menu and the compact floor.